Richard Wallis stood in the front hall of his house, gazing into space, waiting for Merrian.
He had had to order the News of the World especially from their normal shop on the high street. If there was something horrible to be read about himself he would do it in his own home. He had woken early – half past five, he thought – and sat in the kitchen, drinking strong coffee and waiting for the papers to arrive at half past eight.
No article. He had scanned every page, then read every word in detail, searching with his finger for a sign of his name or a mention of the club or Vincent Mar. And when he had finished searching the News of the World he had searched the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Times, the Sunday Mirror and the Observer, thinking that perhaps his shame had been diverted. That his disgrace waited for him on some other page, in some previously agreeable newspaper. Merrian had kept the children out of the way, had taken them eggs and soldiers in bed, had let him search every column, every sentence.
Nothing.
She appeared now at the top of the stairs, wearing a long red dress, with beads on the bodice and layers to the skirt. Her eyes were lined in black. She had put on lipstick.
He offered her a nervous smile. ‘Beautiful.’
She stood on the stairs and looked at him. ‘Thank you.’
***
Anna arrived early at the entrance to Kensington Gardens. It was only seven in the evening and the park was still full of picnickers and sunseekers, behaving as if it were the middle of the afternoon.
There were little girls in swimsuits and towelling dresses running and rollerskating on the paths. A group of men – some of them in suits – had improvised a game of cricket with jumpers, tree branches and walking sticks for wickets. Three generations of Indian ladies, the youngest a cluster of toddlers at their mothers’ knees, were gathered on a tartan picnic blanket in their saris eating sandwiches and tomatoes out of Tupperware. The temperature had dropped from the highs of the afternoon and hovered around the mid-seventies. It was still too warm for the black nylon, floor-length gown that Anna wore, and she attracted more than a few glances as she walked along the paths towards the pond. All around her women were sunbathing in bikinis or lying with their skirts pulled up to the tops of their thighs, trying to give their legs a bit of colour. Men lounged on towels or the shirts they’d taken off their backs. And spotted between these examples of firm youth were circles of deckchairs holding the middle-aged and the elderly, in crimplene dresses and grey Sta-Prest trousers – hankies and battered sun hats on their heads.
She didn’t remember exactly how the invitation had described the venue – she’d worked hard only to read it when Mrs Wallis wasn’t looking at her – but she remembered something about the Round Pond, so it was bound to be somewhere near there. She remembered the words dinner and charity auction, boating and champagne. 8 p.m. arrival and carriages at midnight. She had decided to wait until the boating started and then go and stand beside the dock and gently insinuate herself into the party’s midst. It was a vague plan, but then, as she kept comforting herself, there was nothing to lose if she didn’t pull it off, only a little bit of pride.
The Round Pond was oddly named for it was not a pond so much as a lake, and not really round at all but rectangular with edges that curved like those of a tea tray. There was a marquee on the far side, looking a little like a white circus tent, with a kind of turret at its highest point, and a Union flag flying from a flagpole. Anna circled the lake with casual slowness and noticed with delight that the marquee did not seem to be fenced off in any way.
A group of men down by the edge of the pond were setting up a temporary landing stage, and on a path nearby a truck was delivering a dozen brightly coloured pedalos, which Anna eyed with some alarm. So much for boating, then. Everyone would see her lace-up Oxfords if she had to sit with her feet up. She briefly cursed her giant feet – no woman that she knew had feet big enough to lend her shoes.
Round and round the pond Anna walked, growing warmer and moister in her dress. She began to spot other overdressed people picking their way through the rows of deckchairs and the naked flesh. Ladies in sparkly peacock- and salmon-coloured evening dresses. Jackets on shoulders, beads glinting in the sunlight. Velvet bags and gold brooches and lots and lots of pearls. All the men wore tuxedos, as stiff-looking and unblemished as army uniforms. Anna took a handkerchief, Aloysius’s handkerchief, from her handbag and tried to mop her face and neck.
She had been hanging back from the marquee itself for at least fifteen minutes and now she saw, with a sinking heart, that a line of string fencing had been erected to either side of it, blocking off the path she walked on and allowing only one entrance to the patch of grass where the party lay. The guests she watched pulled invitations from their breast pockets and showed them to the tuxedoed host at the entrance. Each invitation was checked and a note made in a little notepad that the host carried with him.
She had no invitation.
She saw, from a distance, Mr and Mrs Wallis arrive together and make their way in. There was a flood of people at what Anna supposed was eight o’clock and then it slowed a little. After a while, the man with the little pad left the empty entrance and went inside the marquee. Anna saw her chance and started towards the gap in the string fence but before she could get there, she saw a young man with dark red hair in a tuxedo jogging around the edge of the pond and she slowed, uncertain of what to do.
The man saw her and slowed too. ‘Late as well?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t we dreadful!’ In a tone that implied he did not think he was dreadful at all.
The man with the notepad reappeared and hurried towards the young man in black, who produced an invitation from his breast pocket and walked inside the enclosure.
‘Are you coming in, madam?’ the man with the notepad asked.
‘Waiting for my date,’ Anna said, unsure how to bluff this one out. The man looked at his watch and made a face.
***
The tiny windows meant that the cells stayed cool even in summer. Well. No. Cool was not the word for it. There was a coldness and a dampness in the air. A scything smell of mould that you could taste on the back of your tongue.
Nik lay on the bed, his stomach in spasms. This morning a man had taken him by the back of the head and smashed his face into some wire fencing that ran along the side of the walkway. Then the man had walked on as if nothing unusual had happened.
A boy with shaggy brown hair and a long, beautiful face had found him some time later and taken him to the nearest shower room to clean his face.
‘Head down, don’t go out, don’t speak to anyone,’ he’d told Nik. ‘If anyone wants something from you – food, tobacco, toothpaste, doesn’t matter what it is – hand it over. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you to stand your ground. You’re remand, aren’t you? Me too.’
‘I was in Feltham before,’ Nik said.
‘Were you?’ the young man said, brightening. ‘Oh, well that’s okay. You’ll be fine.’
Nik looked up at him. ‘I’m not sure that’s how it works.’
***
Time seemed to pass very slowly. Anna breathed the air and felt her chances slipping away. At length, a few guests started to come out and stand in the space between the marquee and the pond. Waiters appeared from inside, holding trays filled with glasses of champagne. Two men in tuxedos started to push the pedalos into the pond by the landing stage.
She paced in the stretch of grass behind the marquee and wondered if she should wait for the gala to be over and try to meet the Wallises coming out. Anna crossed behind the back of the marquee for the fiftieth time and then stopped as she heard a shout.
‘Escaped already?’
She looked round. A middle-aged man with a moustache was leaning over the string fence and calling to her.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
‘Boating not your thing?’ He grinned at her. He had a Yorkshire accent, his face was rather flushed and he was smoking a cigarette.
‘Not exactly,’ Anna said, maintaining her distance. What on earth did he want chatting her up over a fence? Men were so awkward.
‘You’re missing all the champagne,’ he called to her, undeterred by her refusal to close the gap between them.
Anna considered the fact that the host might hear him shouting and come over. She edged a little closer to the fence. ‘My date didn’t turn up,’ she said. ‘I’m meant to be inside. I was the plus one. But he isn’t here.’
‘And you’ve been standing out there all this time?’ the man asked. ‘It’s nearly nine.’
‘He’s probably just late,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll give him hell when he gets here.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ the man cried. ‘Come inside. I don’t have a plus one – I’ll just say that you’re my guest. And when your boy turns up we’ll both have a shout at him.’
This wasn’t what she’d imagined at all. And the man did seem rather keen on her. But it was undoubtedly her way in. ‘Thank you,’ she called. ‘That’s very kind!’ And set off for the entrance.
The man with the notepad looked most suspicious when the moustached gentleman, who seemed to be called Gerald, explained that she was his plus one and was joining him a little late. But he smiled and nodded her through all the same.
Gerald took Anna’s arm, rather too enthusiastically for her liking, and led her over to a waiter where he got them both a glass of champagne.
‘Here’s to late men, patient women and their rescuers,’ he said, evidently pleased with his toast. Anna clinked glasses.
‘It’s ever so kind of you. All the same, I’m sure he’ll come.’
‘Well, till then you can be my date,’ the man said. ‘Pedalo?’
‘I really can’t in this dress, but do go ahead,’ Anna said, smiling tautly.
‘No. No. We’ll find something for both of us,’ Gerald said to her. ‘Let’s see what people are up to inside. There’s a band, you know.’
He took her arm again and led her into the marquee which was filled with large circular tables covered in white tablecloths, lots of silverware, glasses and floral bouquets. In one corner a group of waiters were starting to serve the first course. There must have been close to a hundred people inside. A few were dancing in front of the band which played Cliff Richard numbers in the style of a lounge-y seaside ballroom.
‘Shall we?’ said Gerald, but he wasn’t looking at her, nor did he wait for a reply. Instead he grasped her hand firmly and drew her through the tables and out onto the dance floor. They deposited their glasses and Anna’s bag on a nearby table.
‘He might get here any minute,’ Anna tried.
‘One dance,’ Gerald said. ‘A little thank you for the rescue?’
Anna unwillingly raised her right hand and he took it and led her in a strange semi-waltz, to the strains of ‘Bachelor Boy’. He danced rather too close and breathed on her face a lot when he spoke.
‘Labour Party?’ Gerald asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘Is he from the party? This late man of yours.’
‘Oh. No. Not, actually. Why would you ask?’
‘’Cause it’s all Labour in here tonight. Few Liberals in the corner. Chairwoman’s married to the undersecretary at the Foreign Office and he sold most of the tickets. So it’s Labour to the gills. I thought you’d know.’
‘No. Not really. Are you in the party then?’
‘GMB. We got some tickets as a thank you for a favour we did them. But there must be fifty MPs in here tonight. Bet the Tories would love to drop a bomb on us right now.’
Anna laughed, despite herself.
‘You’ve got a nice laugh,’ Gerald told her. ‘What’s he do then? This man of yours.’
‘Oh. Um … he’s an accountant,’ Anna said, unable to think quickly of another job.
‘Do they have left-wing accountants?’ Gerald asked.
‘I think so,’ Anna said. ‘My one leans that way. Most of the time. I think.’
‘But he provides,’ Gerald said. ‘That’s the main thing, eh?’
Anna knew that she was meant to let this pass. She knew it. ‘Actually, I support myself,’ she told him, with a slightly icy smile.
‘You one of those feminists?’ Gerald asked, a dose of amusement in his voice.
‘Yes. I’m fairly sure I am,’ Anna told him and suddenly Gerald let go of her hand and made a hard grab at her waist. Anna pulled away.
They stared at each other for a moment, confused and frozen on the dance floor.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.
Gerald took a step towards her. ‘I was trying to see if you had a sense of humour,’ he said and made another grab at her waist.
Anna stumbled backwards again and the couples around them stopped dancing.
‘Jesus,’ Gerald said, all humour gone from his voice. ‘I was only trying to tickle you. It’s not like I was going to bloody rape you.’
Anna was aware of the women on the dance floor looking at her, waiting to see what she would do. She folded her arms across herself and stepped back a little further. ‘It’s just that my date will be here any minute and he wouldn’t …’ She worked hard to stay calm. ‘He’d be upset, you see. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.’
Gerald’s face was flushed an even deeper red than it had been by drink. He looked around him at the men and their wives.
‘Can’t take a bloody joke, can she?’ he said, a tremor in his voice.
Anna kept waiting for him to seem calmer, to walk away, but it wasn’t happening. There was a silence and Anna looked for a way to leave the dance floor but now people had stood up and were filling the spaces between the tables.
Behind them, the band started playing ‘Summer Holiday’, either oblivious to the scene on the dance floor or anxious to cover it with music. Gerald took the pocket square from his tuxedo and wiped his streaming face. Anna made a step to one side, a cautious attempt to signal that she was going to leave the floor now. Gerald took a step towards her.
‘Come on,’ he said, breathing hard and attempting a smile. ‘You owe me a dance. You know you do.’ He held his hand out to her.
Anna turned away from him and tried to signal with her eyes to the women nearest her that she needed a way through, a way out. None of them moved.
She heard Gerald behind her, his voice quiet. ‘Don’t be a bitch.’
‘Please?’ Anna said to the woman standing nearest her, part of the wall of humans blocking her in.
‘Bitch!’ she heard again. This time the voice was closer.
A woman’s voice called loudly on the far side of the dance floor.
‘Excuse me!’ the voice said. ‘Excuse me, please! Trying to get through.’
Anna turned towards the sound of it. She could see Gerald in the periphery of her vision, standing less than ten feet away. She stumbled sideways, her shoe caught on the hem of her dress.
‘Excuse me now!’ The woman’s voice was nearer. ‘Anna!’
Anna looked towards the voice in confusion. It was Merrian Wallis, holding the skirts of her red gown up to her knees and picking her way through the mass of bodies and legs of seated guests.
‘Anna!’ she said again, and Anna nodded.
‘I thought it was you!’ Merrian said, beaming at her in a most odd and exaggerated way. She swept on, as if the people around them were not watching and everything was quite normal. Then Merrian caught Anna firmly by the elbow. ‘I’d been wondering where you’d got to! You must come and say hello to everyone!’ And with that she pulled Anna back the way she’d come, happily ‘Excuse me’-ing her way through the crowd.
Anna was too stunned by everything that had happened in the previous ten minutes to speak. Instead, Merrian led her through the mass of tables to one where the food had already been served, and Richard Wallis and a group of male friends were clustered to one side, deep in conversation.
Merrian pulled out an empty chair, sat Anna gently in it and handed her a glass of wine that happened to be sitting on the table.
‘Drink something,’ she said. Anna drank.
Merrian dropped her skirts and sat down next to her.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘What a bastard! I’m only glad I recognised you from so far away. I came to see what was going on and there you were. What a sod.’ Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes seemed very bright. ‘I appear to have lost my drink.’
Anna finished the glass of white wine she was holding and wondered what she would say when Merrian asked her what she was doing there.
‘Lost your date and gained a pig?’ Merrian asked and Anna nodded, stunned that it did not occur to the woman that Anna might be here because of them. How naive, she found herself thinking. But how nice as well.
‘Thank you,’ Anna said to her. ‘They wouldn’t let me through.’ She meant the women; the failure of the men to help was somehow less meaningful.
‘Nobody wanted to be shouted at by the stupid man. And people are cowards,’ Merrian said. ‘Don’t think about it. I need another drink.’
Anna started to get up. ‘I’ll get you one,’ she said.
‘No,’ Merrian told her. ‘You stay here. Have a little sit. We’ve a spare seat. And a spare starter if you’d like it. Can’t stand salmon mousse myself. I find the texture unnerving. I’ll rustle up more wine. Or champagne. Do you like champagne?’
Anna nodded.
‘Good. So do I.’ And she left in the direction of a line of waiters near the marquee entrance.
Anna tore apart a bread roll and covered one half of it in the pale pink mousse. It had a sort of clammy wetness and tasted mostly of cream cheese. While she ate she studied the men sitting across the table from her. Richard Wallis was in the centre and beside him was a tall, slim man with dark, bushy hair and very pronounced eyebrows who gesticulated a lot and rapped the table occasionally. Flanking them were two older men of about forty or fifty, one with short-cropped greying hair and the other with a blond mop and blue eyes. She didn’t recognise any of them, but then she didn’t know what most MPs looked like. Anna angled herself so that she was looking away as she strained to hear the conversation. She could think of no convincing way to introduce herself, not when they were en masse like this. If she could have caught Richard Wallis on his own …
‘… into committee and then that’s it sunk for ten years …’ she managed to catch.
A somewhat portly singer dressed in a white and turquoise tuxedo walked onto the stage and launched himself forcefully into a Richards standard. Anna bucked her head, trying to shake the sound, but the music rode an insistent and uncompromising melodic wave that the fretting of the suits could not compete with.
‘… the French just throw money at the thing and Benn’s lost interest …’ she heard and then the end of the sentence drowned in a stutter of vibrato.
‘… Barbara said she wouldn’t …’
‘Ohhh … Oh – Oh. Oh – Oh!’ The mermaid-coloured singer span and cocked a jaunty finger at the dancers on the floor. The microphone squeaked in complaint.
‘… but then she does what he says anyway. Makes no bloody sense!’ a raised voice maintained before Anna heard it being shushed.
The voices of the men across the table had dropped down. Merrian returned eventually with four champagne flutes gripped in her hands. As she sat, Richard Wallis stretched out a hand towards the drinks but Merrian only gave him a curt: ‘They’re ours, darling,’ and then turned back to Anna.
‘All Labour then?’ Anna said, tilting her head back towards the men.
‘Mostly. Angus was a Liberal but he defected,’ Merrian said, indicating the tall man with bushy hair.
‘Didn’t that annoy his constituency?’ Anna asked.
‘Oh. No. No constituency. He’s a political agent. My husband’s Man Friday, as t’were. He runs both our lives.’
‘Thank you,’ Anna said, accepting a glass of champagne. ‘Did I say thank you, before, for rescuing me?’
‘You did. And you really shouldn’t mention it. Least I could do.’ Merrian sat up very straight and knocked back half a glass of champagne. She glanced meaningfully across at the group of men and then, mimicking a man’s voice: ‘Tony and Barbara. George and Harold. Oh my goodness! You’ll never guess what Richard said to Peter!’ She dropped back into her normal voice. ‘It’s like listening to a group of women in a launderette discussing The Archers. But less compelling.’ She touched Anna’s arm for a moment. ‘Thank God for champagne,’ she said.
Anna smiled. She was delighted to have found a version of Merrian so obviously relaxed and gossipy, but she did not know what would happen if she brought up the subject of the club, or Saturday night, or Mar. All around them waiters were clearing the first course and bringing out the mains. Anna was too late to rescue her bread roll. She finished her latest glass of champagne without really meaning to. Merrian handed her another.
‘We’re both behaving rather badly,’ Merrian said, leaning in towards Anna. ‘Because something awful was supposed to happen today and then it didn’t. And everyone is very relieved.’
‘I see,’ Anna nodded. ‘Um … Sorry. None of my business. But … what didn’t happen?’
Merrian looked at her and frowned. ‘Something horrible was going to be written about my husband. Smears. Hateful. But it never came. Nothing. Just dropped away.’
‘Oh!’ Anna said. ‘That’s wonderful.’ And immediately wondered what exactly the newspapers were going to have said.
‘Anyway,’ Merrian said, shaking her head hard, ‘it’s over. Gone. Don’t want to think about it.’
A mysterious piece of meat arrived, sitting on a raft of sauté potatoes and topped with a little wheel of orange. Anna gazed across the table at Richard Wallis. There were so many things she wanted to ask.
‘Do MPs go to a lot of parties?’ Anna tried. ‘I thought they mostly worked.’
‘Functions. Birthdays. Conferences. Late-night sessions of who knows what. Drinks to hammer out this or that. Old boys’ reunions. Charity galas. We’re being governed by the inebriated. Quite literally in George Brown’s case …’ Merrian made a face. She poked at her food, made a face and then pushed the plate into the centre of the table to make more room for the champagne glasses sitting next to her.
Anna grinned. ‘Just drinking?’
Merrian looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
Anna mimed smoking a cigarette and rolled her eyes.
‘Oh,’ Merrian said. ‘Oh! I see. Well, probably. But it’s hard to get anything done if you’re blotto on … whatever. Uppers. Downers. Cocaine. I know he’s tried cocaine,’ she said in a quieter voice, ‘because he told me. But he didn’t think it was for him.’ Merrian thought about this. ‘We’re both a bit Middle England.’
Anna smiled. ‘Does that make a difference?’
‘These things either seem normal or they don’t.’ Merrian knocked back the rest of her glass. ‘No. It’s not just that. We each have at least one parent who can remember being working class.’ She looked sharply at Anna. ‘Do you?’
Anna shook her head. Her parents, though faintly impoverished for much of their lives, were descended from lines of doctors and graduates and writers. Going to university, being a professional, those were just things that you were expected to do. Which was, as Anna thought now, probably the reason she felt so ashamed of her occupations so far.
‘There’s a memory,’ Merrian went on. ‘The memory of not knowing what to do in certain places. The fear of getting it wrong. It infects people, like a cold. Like something worse than a cold. You grow up with it and you become infected with this … nervousness. This hesitation. As if you’re waiting to be found out – by your clothes; the way you speak; choosing the wrong wine; speaking too loudly; not knowing how to tip.’
‘But Oxford …’ Anna said.
‘Reminds you that you went to the wrong school and wore the wrong clothes and grew up in the wrong town. ‘Oh, you don’t ski?’; ‘Didn’t you think to bring a gift?’; ‘Why would you wear those shoes?’ On and on. I have a bachelor’s in French and a doctorate in humiliation. Shall I get us more drinks?’
‘No!’ Anna said, fearing that neither of them could take much more. She looked longingly at the plate of food in front of her, wondered if the brown thing might be duck and ate a solitary potato. She wanted to keep the conversation flowing and her attention on Merrian but she was beginning to feel extremely tipsy.
‘Oh, God. It’s neverending. There’s a bloody auction as well,’ Merrian said. ‘Where are you meant to be sitting?’
Anna stood, alarmed at the change in subject. She didn’t want to be found out now. ‘Don’t worry about that! Shall I see if I can get us another drink? Stay here!’ And with that she exited towards the bar.
Her bag. She’d put it down with her drink before Gerald started dancing with her. It must be on one of the tables over by the dance floor. The marquee was full of waiters again, clearing the main course and preparing to bring out dessert. I have nowhere to sit, Anna thought. Do I just stand by the bar? She started to make her way through the tables, keeping one eye out for Gerald and the other for her bag.
Across the room she spotted it, on the edge of a table by the dance floor. She kept her head down and shuffled towards it.
‘He turned up then,’ someone said. Just below her a man was sitting at the table which her bag was on. It was the young man with dark red hair, the one who’d entered when she’d first lied about her date.
‘Yes,’ Anna said and smiled at him. ‘Just left my bag.’ She carried on around and picked it up. She opened it for a minute. It seemed to all be in there.
‘I don’t think people steal from handbags at these things,’ the red-haired man said to her. Anna felt herself blush. ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘you never can tell about the staff. Are you going to the bar?’ He stood up. ‘I thought I’d have a last one myself.’
Anna smiled at him but said nothing. As soon as they were there she’d shake him off.
They were close to the bar when he asked her, ‘Did I see you sitting over there with Jones and Wallis and all that? I thought it was you but I couldn’t tell.’
‘I was at Richard Wallis’s table. I know his wife. We were just having a chat. That’s all. Not my table.’
‘Thought it odd if we ran in the same circles but I’d never seen you.’
‘I don’t think I’m properly a member of any of these circles,’ Anna said and smiled. ‘Just a friendly interloper. I work with Mrs Wallis’s best friend from university. One of those London things. You know … how you think it’s so big but then eventually you meet everyone who knows everyone else and it suddenly feels small.’ She was being much too chatty. She would make her excuses in a minute.
‘Oh God. That is so true, isn’t it? It’s so fucking incestuous, this town. Everyone knows everyone else, everyone went to the same schools, same resorts, lives in the same streets. It’s a wonder we’re not all inbred.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘Richard Wallis though. Jesus! The stories I could tell you about … and he looks so mild.’
‘Really?’ Anna said, immediately a little more sober. ‘No, really, do tell. Please?’
The man stood and looked at her and then at the crowd of black-clothed backs at the bar. He sighed. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said. ‘Other plans. Not to be rude but I’m expected on the other side of the park later tonight. And the pudding looks ghastly.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a breath of air,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve had far too much to drink. Shall I walk with you? Just for a minute. Not to be dreadful or anything, but I would love to hear what you had to say about Richard Wallis.’